h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It tastes divine!!! It's best with bacon, runny yolk fried eggs, fried mushrooms and buttered toast!

traditional north german dish is pigs snout and feet cooked in pigs blood

i very politely ate it one day at my grandparents house. i believe i was nine years old

only a few minutes later my grandfather passed away

i haven't touched it since

What a sad story!

black pudding fried or rawand now talking myself in to getting some in town tomorrow

yes, it was sad at the time, paulh, but my grandfather never felt a thing. his heart suddenly stopped and he went out like a light

sad for us but good for him

Had he had a fairly good life up to then?

i guess. there were ups and there were downs - like there are in most lives

he lived through both world wars but then those were the times. he never knew anything else - and neither did his peers

had there been greener grass on the other side of the fence - but there wasn't

he had to fight in WWII, but even the british who made him a prisoner of war respected him immensely. as did the people in his him town

i remember my father saying he was very proud of being able to call himself his son-in-law

Just out of curiosity, was he a prisoner of war because of figbting in Germany's army? Or, was he Danish and Denmark was allied with germany?

denmark was never allied with germany (only italy, spain and - to some extent - austria can be called that), denmark was occupied along with norway, the netherlands, belgium, france and eastern europe

he was a german soldier in spite of being an anti fascist, but those were the times: deserting was not an option as your family would pay a high prize

I was afraid of that.

so was he

Apparently he came back alive after the war was over. Too many young (and older) men did not. It was tragic for the mothers of these soldiers that Hitler didn't see fit to give them warm woolen socks and other warm apparel for their invasion of Stalingrad. The Russians surrounded them and just let them freeze to death.

On a human level, I think it is universal that a mother feekls the death of her chldren more keenly than anything else that can happen to her.

I believe you are right

While my grandfather was in prison camp in England my mother (then 16 year old) had to write him that his only son (9 years old) had been killed in a traffic accident: Some boys had teased him and when he tried to run away from them he fell under the wheels of a truck. As fate had it the truck was a British military truck...

My grandmother was in no condition to write said letter. She suffered a very severe nervous breakdown and never got over this loss. We had a lot of happy ours with her when I was a kid but when she finally died at the age of 90 she was very tired and even though she was not religious I think she hoped she would now meet her husband and son again

That is such a heart-rending story Pierce. Family tragedies cast long shadows.

I should probably add that none of the family ever blamed the unfortunate truck driver nor the British army nor anything British at all. Period. All allied forces were welcomed as liberators by my family members who where all liberal socialists and as anti fascist as could be

Still are, by the way

Kids tease each other unmercifully, I'm afraid.

So do adults.

The sister of my maternal grandmother had moved from Germany to Denmark and got married to a Dane in a small village there.

One night during the German occupation of Denmark they were walking home from some event when they came across some drunk German soldiers. My uncle asked them to behave and was shot.

Many years later I heard my great-aunt say "but I can't hate all Germans because of that. I used to be one myself, remember?"

Do you mean shot dead? How ghastly, and that isn't a strong enough word to write. As a British person, I can honestly say I was unaware of the German occupation of Denmark.

I am aware of what happened in other countries such as France,Holland and Czechoslovakia. In fact my grandmother had two very lovely children to care for as refugees from Holland and what is now Slovakia. Their stories were tragic, but the families have kept in touch over the years and I am glad to say have both had successful lives since the end of the war.

Yes, he was indeed shot dead

There were resistance movements in all occupied nations (as well as in Germany, and this must never be forgotten!). Unfortunately there were also nazis. Many Danes volunteered to fight on Hitler's eastern front...

One of the things the Danes are very proud of is helping the vast majority of Danish Jews (7.500) over the Øresund to safety in Sweden - during the occupation, mind you, so quite dangerous!

When I visited the Jewish museum I Berlin I saw a large map of Europe. Each country was marked with the number of Jews from that country murdered by the nazis. The number on Denmark was 60, I believe

I just told my dad some of your stories Pierce - he said he knew about Denmark, but the only thing he was disappointed in was that after the end of the war (he was in Germany then) that they didn't get sent up into Denmark, where they had been hoping to have gone to.

By the way, we have had even more snow overnight. My car is almost buried. It's just beginning to thaw a little bit - but in about an hour or so it will get cold again Even the kids have got bored with it - no snowmen this weekend.